Friday, October 29, 2010

Ben Daley at Wireless EdTech

To be honest the Wireless EdTech conference wasn't horrible, and I have no real reason to call Chris Dede a prostitute, other than I can't stop thinking "What a prostitute" when I listen to him. I don't know why.

The fact of the matter though is that ed tech is still in a boring period. Maybe near the end of it, and part of the reason I went was to check in on that.

Nope. Still boring.

Also, the self-referential ed tech bubble was in full effect. You know what I'm talking about.

Ben Daly of High Tech High was the best part. I know he's not a big ed tech conference guy because I asked him if he was going to NECC about five years ago and his response was "What's NECC?" Anyway, he talked about:

  • Using Elluminate to do their "looking at student work" protocols virtually. The public can also join and observe this process twice a month over the interweb.
  • He showed off some nice books the students have made. Of course, that's nothing new, but they were really substantial, well designed, with high production values. In particular he passed around a book of artwork with text obviously culled from online discussion of the work. Really excellent modelling.
  • HTH is dipping their toes into online math instruction, which is probably going to become popular in a lot of progressive high schools which can't fit enough traditional math content into a project-based curriculum. If this can be made to work, it will be a great relief to many schools.

2 comments:

Stephen Downes said...

OK, so what would make Ed Tech not boring?

Tom Hoffman said...

K-12 teachers and students actually all having computing devices which are well adapted to their basic requirements. Channels for distributing free software and open resources. Sufficient investment in teacher training and schools to bootstrap more up innovation. Less moral (and other) panic.

tbh, just the first would be fine.